


Tell Me What to Say

by eliddell



Series: Blood of Heaven and Earth 'verse [3]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Established romantic pairings in the background, Gen, Holidays, I actually managed to list every single character this time, Male Friendship, Trust, slice-of-life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 18:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20532653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliddell/pseuds/eliddell
Summary: Zack has a talk with Sephiroth.





	Tell Me What to Say

**Author's Note:**

> During a comment thread that spun off from Chapter 20 of _Blood of Heaven and Earth_, I mentioned that I'd written a brief thing about Zack talking to Sephiroth about his behaviour since Nibelheim. This is that thing.
> 
> Now if only I could figure out why the best title I could come up with for it ended up being derived from the lyrics of an old Glass Tiger song that doesn't even fit the story, I'd be happy.
> 
> **Disclaimer**: Final Fantasy VII belongs to Square-Enix or whatever they're calling themselves these days, not to me. The specific text of this fanfic falls under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license to the extent that this does not infringe on Square's rights.

I found him in his office . . . which, okay, wasn't that unusual. Even on a holiday afternoon. _Director_ and _General_ were both full-time jobs, even with Genesis and I taking as much of the weight off him as we could. But the problem wasn't just that there were documents only Seph could sign, or that he insisted on reading them first, even if we'd screened them for him. No, the problem was that Seph at least glanced at _every single mission report_, because he liked having a picture of what was going on. And these days, there were a lot of mission reports. So I was pretty sure he'd been up here since his usual arrival time of oh-seven-hundred, if not longer, and eaten rat bars at his desk for lunch. Again. 

"Zack, what are you doing here?" Seph didn't even look up from whatever he was reading. 

"Looking for you," I said. 

"To what purpose? I have no intention of letting you drag me to some idiotic gathering to celebrate the numbers on the calendar." 

I shook my head. "I know you don't like parties." It had taken me a couple of false starts with him to figure that out—I mean, I _like_ being around people and making new friends, and it had taken a little while for my self-centered sixteen-year-old mind to accept the idea that Seph was just the opposite and absolutely _hated_ trying to deal with new people in unstructured circumstances—but I'd gotten it eventually. I know I'm a bit dense about some things, but I'm not _stupid_. "But I _am_ taking you to dinner at the Gainsboroughs'. Aerith said specifically that you were invited, and it's just going to be the six of us—me, you, Aerith, her mom, and Cloud and Tifa. No one you don't know." 

"Zack, I—" 

"You've been holed up in here since Vince left," I said. "Which makes this the third day. That's long enough, Seph. You can't just put your life on hold every time he isn't here. He wouldn't want you to, either, even if he probably lets you get away with it. And before you say that you'll attract attention the moment you leave the Tower, I have that all figured out. We just put you in a Second Class uniform and a helmet and a jacket, with your hair _inside_ the jacket and a scarf around your neck. People'll probably think you're Kunsel." 

"You've spent a long time planning this," Seph said slowly, looking at me. 

"Since Vince put in for time off," I admitted. 

Seph sighed. I knew that meant he was giving in—when he was dead-set against one of my ideas, he either went all stony-faced or threw me out of the room. "Perhaps I should set these aside for an hour or two," he admitted. "This is growing tedious. I had hoped to process as much as possible before Vincent gets back, but it seems never-ending." 

"So you wanna spend more time with your boyfriend? Hey, I don't blame you." I caught his frown, and held up my hands before he could say anything biting. "I'd like to spend more time with Aerith, too. But blazing through the paperwork doesn't really help—there's always more. I found that out the hard way." And Seph knew it too . . . but maybe he needed to be reminded just a bit. "Anyway . . . if you're coming, you should go get changed." 

"That won't be necessary." For a moment, I thought that meant he'd decided he wasn't coming after all, but then Seph pushed himself to his feet. "I've discovered a different way of escaping notice. Are you ready to go?" 

I checked myself over—uniform, Buster Sword . . . yeah, that would do. "Sure, I'm good." 

Sephiroth positioned himself beside me, with his hand on my shoulder . . . and suddenly we weren't in his office anymore. I yelped as I fell a couple of inches to the ground. 

We were standing on a dirt path. A familiar dirt path, part of Aerith's back garden. The air smelled of the flowers she somehow managed to keep thriving even in this cold season, and more faintly of mako and rot. 

We were below the Plate. Somehow. 

I swallowed. Looked at Seph, who was wearing his stone face. "I didn't black out, did I?" 

"No." Still stony. Waiting for a reaction, probably. 

"So that means you can teleport or something? That is _so_ cool," I said, without waiting for a response, and almost sighed when his expression softened up a bit. "Is it a fancy new spell, or some kind of Immortalis thing?" 

"The latter. I am still exploring the limits of the ability. Currently, only you, Genesis, and Vincent know about it. I would prefer to keep it quiet for now." The _I trust you_ was implicit. 

"So, could you, like, whisk us off to Costa del Sol for an instant vacation?" Not tonight, of course, but if he could take me and Aerith there for an afternoon . . . 

"I don't know. The furthest I've succeeded in going so far is Junon, and I was alone for that particular experiment. Moving other people . . . requires more effort." He'd relaxed now that I'd once again reassured him that he wasn't too freaky for me to want to hang out with. 

At first, I'd pushed my way into his life because Angeal had asked me to, and stuck around because . . . well, because it made me feel needed, I guess. And because I genuinely liked the guy. Seph had been through eighteen kinds of hell in his life, but underneath it all, he was still a mostly decent person, and he needed to have someone around who could remind him of that. 

Vincent and Genesis had each taken a bit of that job away from me . . . which was part of the reason why I'd asked Aerith to invite Seph for dinner tonight. I wanted a chance to reconnect with him a bit. And, well, he'd been kinda grumpy with me since Nibelheim and I wanted him relaxed, or at least as relaxed as he ever got, before I talked to him about it. 

"Huh. It's still pretty impressive," I said. "Useful, too, if it means you don't have to slog across the countryside in a truck. Do you always come out above the ground, though?" Since I hadn't been expecting it, I'd nearly landed on my face instead of my feet. 

A shrug. "I didn't want to risk embedding you in the dirt." 

"Oh. Um, yeah. That would suck." It would suck a lot, actually. Especially if that meant my feet and the dirt were trying to be in the same place at the same time. That could be nasty. "Anyway, we should probably go inside." 

Seph made a little lead-on kind of gesture, so I led, walking around to the front of the house and knocking on the door. Aerith must have been waiting right inside, because she opened the door right away. 

"Come in, both of you," she said, with a warm smile. 

I walked right in, but Seph hesitated on the threshold. "Your pardon, Miss Gainsborough, but I am not normally invited into civilian homes, and I am . . . not sure of the etiquette . . ." 

I would have laughed if I hadn't known he was serious. "You don't have to worry about that with friends, Seph. It's just like dropping in on, say, Genesis . . . well, except without the _Loveless_ quotes or the dumbapple-flavoured everything. But you get the idea." Although really, if he was willing to ask the question instead of just clamming up or doing whatever seemed good to him at the time and brazening out the fallout with a mako-coloured glare, he already knew he was among friends. 

"Very well." Sephiroth stepped inside, closing the door behind us while I squirmed out of my sword harness. Usually, I brought the Buster with me when I went under-Plate to make sure the muggers and whatnot know that I wasn't going to knuckle under and be a victim, but what with Seph transporting us straight here, I hadn't needed it this time. 

Seph hadn't bothered bringing Masamune along, but then he could call it from anywhere. His other superhuman trick, along with teleporting and turning into an ultra-powerful angel-like creature with six wings. Mind you, it wasn't as though he'd ever exactly been _normal_ even before he learned he could do those things . . . but who cares? People who think that _normal_ is the most important thing in the world are usually pretty dull. 

Cloud and Tifa were waiting for us in the living room, which had been decorated with all the typical Midwinter's Day stuff—garlands and candles and a fake tree with flowers twined around the branches. Well, okay, you weren't supposed to decorate the tree with _flowers_, but it was close enough. 

"—the flexibility exercises you're doing are harder than the ones Zangan used to give me," Tifa was saying. "Oh, hi, guys." 

"Well, the guy who assigned me those exercises is standing right over there," Cloud said, nodding at Seph. 

"They were the ones set for me when I was six years old," Sephiroth said. "I checked first to make certain that they were . . . suitable." For people not enhanced to within an inch of their lives, he probably meant. 

"They're probably the same ones Angeal assigned me when I was starting out," I said cheerfully, putting my hand on Seph's pauldron and steering him toward the couch. He gave me a raised-eyebrow look, but he did follow. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aerith give us both a quick smile before retreating into the kitchen to help with the food. "Watch out for this guy, though," I added to Cloud, nodding at Seph. "He can bend himself right around _backwards_ and slide his head between his ankles from behind." The truth was that Seph's style of fighting relied as much on balance and flexibility as it did on skill, strength, or speed, although it needed a lot of all of those things, too. Instead of focusing on one thing, he drove himself to be really good at _everything_. Which was probably why he'd never been beaten in a pure one-on-one swordfight. 

"I wasn't aware that Reno gave you access to the Turks' video bugs," Seph said, but the corner of his mouth was twitching up. 

"Actually, it was Angeal that told me," I said. "I don't think I've ever seen your entire practice routine, but what I _have_ seen is pretty brutal. If that's what you have to do to be the best, I think I'll just stick with third place." I flopped down onto the couch for emphasis. Seph took one of the chairs. 

Anyway, practice routines were a topic we all knew something about, even Tifa, although her style of training was quite different, since she was a hand-to-hand fighter rather than a swordsman. Swordswoman? Whatever. It was enough to keep the conversation going until Aerith came back out of the kitchen, and that was all that mattered. 

"Mom says that I'm not allowed to spend one more second in the kitchen while the rest of you are out here," my girlfriend said as she snuggled up against my side. I put my arm around her, and she smiled at me and gave me a peck on the cheek. "We had to buy a _big_ turkey this year to make sure there would be enough to feed three SOLDIERs, and it's more work to cook. But after Zack ate the one we had last year all the way down to the bones, we figured it was safer." 

"We appreciate it," Cloud said. "I mean, the cafeterias in the Shinra building are closed down today, so if you hadn't invited us, I would have ended up eating at the regular army messhall . . . and while they don't try to outright poison you or anything, what the food actually _tastes_ like is a bit of a crapshoot." 

"Mmm. No one should go without a home-cooked meal on Midwinter's Day. Even the Planet thinks so." 

"Your thoughtfulness is appreciated, Miss Gainsborough." Seph sounded a bit stiff, but I could tell he meant it. 

"I keep on having to tell you—it's _Aerith_. Or I'm going to start calling you 'General' all the time." 

"It isn't an incorrect mode of address . . . but very well. Aerith." 

"Thank you, Sephiroth," she said, smiling again. "I'm afraid we didn't plan any party games or anything like that—Zack was afraid you would run away screaming—" 

"I was not!" I'd just said that Seph didn't like those kinds of things. And he didn't. 

Seph raised an eyebrow. "I assure you, I am not given to screaming." No, he just went all stoic. As far as I was concerned, that was worse. 

"I wish Nanaki could have come," Aerith said. "I would have invited him, but it seems silly to expect him to come here all the way from Cosmo Canyon just for one meal." 

"I'm surprised you didn't invite Tseng," Tifa said. "I mean, he's almost like your big brother or something, right?" 

"I haven't seen Tseng in a while," Aerith admitted. "He did call me a couple of times, but he's been busy with, well, Turk stuff. He said that today wasn't good for 'a number of reasons', and I don't think I want to know what they are. Plus, the last time I invited him here, Reno followed him." She wrinkled her nose. 

I laughed. "Right now, I doubt Reno's sober enough to follow a tour guide, never mind Tseng." Reno followed the same pattern for all celebrations: get laid and get falling-down drunk, in whichever order seemed like a good idea to him at the time. 

"That was the problem," Aerith said. 

Tifa nodded. "Reno's mouthy when he's sober, but he's downright horrible when he's drunk. I had to punch him once to get him to shut up." 

"Turks seem to be prone to substance abuse," Sephiroth said. "I expect it has to do with the stresses of their job." 

I waved my hands. "Ugh, no, Seph, please don't bring up that kind of depressing reality stuff right now, okay? There's got to be something else we can talk about. Or maybe we should put a movie on." 

That got me Seph's blank look, the one that meant he wasn't quite sure where he'd overstepped. 

"Just not what I want to talk about," I assured him. "Hey, Cloud, you gotten any _interesting_ missions yet?" 

"I mostly just stick around Midgar, since I'm not permanently assigned to a squad or anything," said our resident chocobo-head. "There was this one time, though, I got called to clean up some whole eaters and it turned out that this old lady's pet cat—or what she said was a pet cat—had already taken care of it before I got there. Then she showed me the cat. Did you know that there's someone up in Icicle Inn that breeds miniature coeurls?" 

I snickered. "Good one, Spiky!" 

"That wasn't in your report," Seph observed, but he said it with one of his tiny smiles. 

Cloud shrugged. "I figured the _important_ thing was that they'd already been dealt with. My sergeant in the regular army didn't encourage elaboration in reports." 

"Ah. I suppose I'm going to have to alter the standing orders about that." 

"That's because you read all of them, instead of passing some off to us mere mortals to summarize for you," I said. 

Cloud blinked. "_All_ of them? Seriously? For every mission?" 

"Lazard did too," Seph pointed out. 

"Lazard stayed at the Tower," I said. "All he needed to do was reports and meetings. You're in the field half the time. I think we need to restructure a bit . . . but this isn't the time to talk about it." 

"Careful, Zack—you almost sounded like a responsible senior officer there," Cloud teased. 

I rubbed the back of my head. "Aw, man . . . Can you check my temperature, Aerith? I think I might be coming down with something." 

She made a mock-serious face and put her hand on my forehead. "Mmm . . . I think you're developing a bad case of maturity. And no healing spell I know is going to fix that." 

We all laughed. Well, okay, Seph only smiled a bit wider than normal, but coming from him, that was just as good. He was more relaxed than I'd seen him in a long time . . . since Angeal had defected, maybe even. 

Was that the problem? Did I make him think of Angeal? Or maybe of Nibelheim, and what had almost happened there? 

I had to be careful myself, when I thought about Angeal. I still felt guilty. Like I should have been able to stop him. Seph probably felt the same. 

Dinner was good. Really good. Turkey and cranberry sauce and cornbread (none of which I'd ever tasted until Aerith had invited me here for Midwinter _last_ year—Midwinter meals in Gongaga involve a lot of frog's legs and melons and stuff) and potatoes and three different kinds of vegetables and then apple pie with ice cream for dessert. None of us talked much while we ate—we all wanted to concentrate on the food. 

My belt was a lot tighter by the time I leaned back in my chair and sighed with contentment. "Thanks," I told our hostess. "That was wonderful." 

"You can keep this one," Mrs. Gainsborough said to Aerith. It was a joke she'd made before, when I complimented her on her cooking. 

"I intend to," Aerith said. Which was what she'd replied the last couple of times, too. 

Cloud and Tifa and I had all been well-conditioned by our parents, I guess, because we started to help clear the table. Mrs. Gainsborough shooed us all out, saying there wasn't enough room for all of us in the kitchen. Cloud and Tifa then went out for a romantic walk together in the garden while Aerith followed her mother into the kitchen, leaving me alone in the living room with Seph. 

Now that we _were_ alone, though, I couldn't quite say what I'd been meaning to say, so I was kind of grateful when he was the one to break the silence. "Zack. You've had your attention focused on me all evening, even when I would have expected it to be elsewhere. Is something wrong?" 

"I don't know if _wrong_ is exactly the word. It's just . . . since Nibelheim, you seem . . . kinda distant." It was the best way I could think of to put it. Not confrontational or anything. "I mean, not that any of us has a lot of free time under the circumstances, but I haven't been seeing much of you unless it's business, and you've been a bit . . . I dunno, short with me sometimes." 

Seph's eyebrows did that thing they always did when he was thinking hard. "I suppose I have. I apologize." 

I waved my hands. "No, no, you don't have to. I'd just kind of like to know why." 

"It's . . . difficult to articulate." 

I waited. I hate waiting, but sometimes with Seph, it's the easiest way to get something out of him. 

"In Nibelheim . . . do you remember, when we first arrived at the reactor, that I went into the back room alone?" 

"Yeah, sure." Leaving me alone with the goopy things in tanks. 

"Genesis was waiting for me there." 

_Wait, what?_

"He was the one who broke the initial news about Jenova to me, although his knowledge of events was . . . distorted. I could tell that he was being deliberately cruel. I told him that I would leave him to rot." Seph shook his head slightly. "There were . . . any number of things . . . I left that room feeling not only despair, but also anger. At Genesis. At Angeal. Both had betrayed me, back in the days when they were all I had, and though those wounds had begun to heal, Genesis had ripped them open again. I think that I may have considered you tainted, on some level, due to your association with Angeal. Trust is . . . difficult for me. I didn't believe that you would betray me, not really, but I had once thought the same of them. I think I may have begun avoiding you because of the conflict it created in my mind. I had to rationalize helping you rescue Aerith from the lab by telling myself things of which I am not proud. Suffice to say that, for a time, something . . . broke, inside me, although I didn't realize it until much later." 

I heaved out a long breath. "Okay, yeah, I'll buy that it's complicated and messy, and I know Nibelheim was hell on you in ways I'll never quite understand. But you've always come through for me when it mattered. And you did make the Board take Genesis back." 

"I realized that he was still my friend . . . but I will never quite trust him as I once did," Sephiroth admitted. 

"And me?" 

"You have never given me any reason not to trust. Regardless of what my paranoia may have been telling me. Now that I am aware of it, I intend to do better." 

"Still friends?" I asked, holding out my hand. 

"Still . . . friends," he agreed, taking it and giving my fingers a single, firm squeeze. 

And that was all I had wanted in the first place. Well, except . . . "So you're gonna take Aerith and I down to Costa del Sol some afternoon to pay me back for putting up with you, right?" I wiggled my eyebrows. 

"Give me a couple of months to work up to it—I have yet to attempt to transport three people at once, much less over such a distance." 

"Then it's a promise," I said, and Seph actually huffed what might have been a laugh. 

Music to my ears.

**Author's Note:**

> Next week we'll see what Vincent was up to while the bunch back in Midgar were having a holiday dinner. That one's a somewhat longer story.


End file.
